Labor in Vehement Attack on Deukmejian Prisoner Work Plan

Organized labor vehemently declared its opposition on Wednesday to Gov. George Deukmejian’s plan to require prison convicts to help pay for their keep by working, contending that the proposal would create “a captive labor force surrounded by armed guards.”

The plan, a major legislative initiative announced by Deukmejian in his State of the State speech in January, flew into a wall of opposition from labor at a hearing of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee.

It was defended by top-level Administration officials, including James A. Rowland, director of corrections, who insisted to the committee that “we don’t want to displace one law-abiding worker” by putting prisoners to work in privately operated enterprises at prison sites.

From a prisoner’s presumed minimum wage earnings, 20% would be withheld to help pay the room and board, 15% would be deducted for restitution to victims and 40% would be taken for a mandatory savings program. Inmates could spend the remaining 25% as they wished.

John F. Henning, the crusty veteran executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, denounced the proposal as a “turning back of the clock of history” that would be seized upon as “the ideal for the employer who wants to exploit.”

“It is a captive labor force surrounded by armed guards,” he boomed out in the deep baritone voice of an old-fashioned union organizer. “It is turning back the clock of history to foist this on prisoners . . . .”

The California Constitution has long prohibited the use of state prisoners to perform work for private employers. Many attempts to repeal the prohibition have been killed by organized labor, which fears, among other things, that prisoners would displace civilian workers.

Deukmejian has proposed that 7,000 inmates, the same number now enrolled in prison industry work programs, participate in his program. He has said it would help ease the budget crunch and allow taxpayer dollars to be spent for services other than prisons.

The governor also has indicated that if the proposal does not receive the required two-thirds favorable vote of the Democratic-dominated Legislature, he may sponsor a ballot initiative in 1990 seeking to implement the program.

Henning warned Wednesday that “bureaucrats” could be counted upon to vastly expand the working convict program. “They (the bureaucrats) are willing to lick the paint off the walls of San Quentin to get this,” he said.

He said he favors expansion of labor-endorsed work programs that enroll 222 apprentices for skilled crafts and the prison industries program that involves 7,000 participants. These programs operate under many restrictions designed to keep them from doing jobs that otherwise might be done by civilian labor.

Asked by committee chairman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) if labor would be prepared to compromise on Deukmejian’s proposal, Henning shot back: “Not on convict labor.”

Assemblyman Bill Baker (R-Danville), legislative author of Deukmejian’s proposed constitutional amendment, and others noted, however, that 60,000 convicts a year are being released from crowded California prisons, whose population is expected to soar from 72,927 last year to 110,230 in 1990.

He and officials of the Department of Corrections said these released convicts must be provided with “meaningful” jobs or they are almost certain to commit more crimes and return to prison at taxpayer expense.

Under the project, modeled after a program for California Youth Authority offenders, private businesses would acquire space at prison sites and employ adult convicts to make products that could be sold on the open market. Currently, such prison-made items as furniture can be sold only to government agencies.

The committee was told by an optical laboratory operator and a sheet metal contractor that goods manufactured by the Youth Authority inmates in its “free venture” work program have undercut their businesses.